


Greatness

by doublejoint



Category: Kuroko no Basuke | Kuroko's Basketball
Genre: Alternate Universe - Hockey, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-12
Updated: 2020-05-12
Packaged: 2021-03-02 22:14:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,166
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24154138
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/doublejoint/pseuds/doublejoint
Summary: “Tell them to bow in the presence of your greatness,” says Tatsuya.
Relationships: Aomine Daiki/Himuro Tatsuya
Kudos: 4





	Greatness

**Author's Note:**

> for dw user buni_emoji.
> 
> Prompt was:  
> "'Bow in the presence of greatness  
> 'Cause right now thou hast forsaken us  
> You should be honored by my lateness  
> That I would even show up to this fake shit"  
> -Kanye West, Stronger
> 
> (this fic was meant to go in a very different direction but...it went where it went)
> 
> happy 5/12 aohimu, this is probably the same verse as [about to bloom](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11961351) etc

The Ducks go on a losing streak two games after Tatsuya gets traded back, a tailspin that takes them from squarely in the middle of the playoff chase to on the outside looking in with little hope of getting back. They’re not mathematically eliminated but some of the kids are acting like they might as well be. It grates on Daiki because he knows they could be, that that’s where they’re headed if they keep up the pace, but damn it, they shouldn’t give up, not when they’ve just gotten Tatsuya back and they’re all mostly healthy.

Tatsuya’s doing all he can, and somehow Daiki had forgotten how he gets when they’re losing. He practices extra, even for him; he doubles up on his superstitions; he keeps quiet and snaps when he does talk. He drives a little too fast on the highway going to practice, so he’s the first one on the ice as well as the last one off. They win one game, and then they lose the next, and of course they beat the Panthers and lose to the Sharks. Daiki doesn’t answer the questions about the coaches’ jobs being on the line when they ask him; he waves them aside in favor of the canned answers Tatsuya’s always been better at giving about how they need to do better and hold themselves accountable. Because they do need to do better and hold themselves accountable, but that’s nothing concrete, easy to say they’re doing when they’re winning but hard to grasp when they’re not, like gloving a slapshot straight out of the air without breaking your hand. Every practice is mandatory, and they all go, and they piece together the plays and the drills and it all falls apart in a game, like glass hit at the shatterpoint. Daiki’s been in three fucking fights and lost two of them and it’s always failed to rally up the team and ended up with him watching, alone in the box, as they make stupid blunders and piss the game away.

The next morning, Daiki wakes up sore, Tatsuya moving about in the bedroom, his phone buzzing again and again with text messages. Shit--did something happen? It’s too late for ore trades, but did one of the coaches get fired? All of them? The GM?

“What’s going on?” The words barely escape his mouth whole, and his body wants to fall back asleep, away from his mind.

“I called a practice,” says Tatsuya. “You’re coming too. You might want to back me up; all the kids are texting.”

Daiki groans. “You couldn’t have woken me up earlier?”

“I wanted to let you sleep.”

Daiki yawns, and Tatsuya yawns, too, smothering the gesture in the sleeve of his sweater. It’s cold in their bedroom, and Daiki grips onto the sheets, but Tatsuya looks so goddamn good already, bed hair and pre-coffee and all. Daiki’s phone vibrates again.

“Shit,” Daiki says and picks it up.

Lots of messages in the team group chat, and a lot to Daiki individually ( _ is it ok for him 2 do this, bro is this a prank, r u even awake, are the coaches gonna be there, bro wtfffff, did u put himuro up to this captain _ ) that he just ignores in favor of firing off one text to the group that yes, this is serious and they’d better fucking be there at 8:30.

“Tatsuya,” Daiki says. “It’s 6:15.”

“We have to get there first,” says Tatsuya.

“Speak for yourself,” says Daiki, but they only have the one car here and he is not going to not be the first one at this ridiculous practice.

He dozes off a couple of times on the highway, texting back that yes, you can be late if you’re taking your kids to school, no you can’t make up some bullshit, until they turn into the parking lot of the practice facility.

“Did you clear this?” says Daiki.

Tatsuya smiles back at him, that you-take-care-of-it smile that Daiki hates.

“Look, you’re the one who called this practice,” says Daiki. “I hope you know that if the facilities managers get mad, you’re the one who’s getting all the blame.”

“I’m the only one with an extra key,” says Tatsuya. “They’ll blame me anyway.”

He chugs the rest of his gas station coffee in one go before tossing it into the garbage can on the way in, a perfect shot. He could have been a basketball player; he’s a little short for it but he could probably do it anyway if he’d wanted to, building up the muscles to jump and throw instead of skate and hit and shoot. But it’s better that he didn’t, probably. 

“You gonna give a speech?” says Daiki, as they change.

“That’s your job, Captain,” says Tatsuya.

Daiki’s about to protest that this is Tatsuya’s practice and Tatsuya’s reasoning and Tatsuya’s key and Tatsuya’s everything, but--they’re a team. He’s the captain. He can take the fall in the media and push himself harder to score more points, but this is his team. Their team, everyone’s team, but his responsibility as captain to do something like this, to make sure everyone knows it’s their responsibility. He should be calling out the kids who act like they’re done, because the season’s not over until they all accept that it is, and they’re better than that. He can drag the team so far on his skills alone, but only as far as they’ll let themselves be dragged, and that’s not even what’s happening right now.

“Were you waiting on me to do something like this?” says Daiki.

Tatsuya shakes his head. “I was hoping that it would go away on its own, or that we could score our way out of it. I just...woke up, couldn’t sleep, and didn’t want to wake you up to talk me out of it.”

Daiki wants to say he wouldn’t have. But what’s he going to do that’s going to work? They’re still the only ones here, though it’s only ten to eight.

“Tell them to bow in the presence of your greatness,” says Tatsuya.

His smile is lopsided, and Daiki knows he’s thinking about when they were in high school, how eager Daiki had been to get even against Kagami, the way he’d been before he and Tatsuya had ever met but the stories that Kise and Satsuki and Ryou and Tetsu have all told him, the way he’d been when they’d first come up from the minors together and Daiki had started off with a ten-game point streak capped with a hat trick and he’d acted like he belonged because, well, why wouldn’t he belong in the NHL?

And the corollary to that is, since all of them belong here why the fuck shouldn’t they belong in the playoffs? Yeah, that’s a good place to start, and thirty-five minutes before he has to make a speech. Maybe they’re in better shape than he’d thought.


End file.
